On April 21st, Google’s mobile algorithm update went into effect. Known as “#Mobilegeddon” across the web, this new algorithm ranks your website according to Google’s measurement of your site’s mobile-friendliness. There was much talk about how this would effect you website results in Google searches.

It is still too soon to see if having a non-mobile site will knock you out of Google rankings, but having your site mobile friendly is of up most importance for your users experience. 90% of Google traffic is mobile so being online is the same as being on a phone, not a computer. In addition, 30% of mobile users will simply abandon their purchase altogether if your website isn’t optimized for mobile.

In an effort to encourage websites to become mobile-friendly, Google has released its guide to mobile best practices and also created a mobile-friendly testing tool. You simple enter your website address in their testing tool and they will tell you if your site is mobile friendly.

Google Mobile Friendly Tool

Here is a resource page that Google has posted to help you understand what this is all about. Check it out here. They have also provided a tracking tool to help you fix any issues. Check out their Tracking mobile usability in Webmaster Tools. Check Google Webmaster Tools’ Crawl Errors report and select the “Smartphone” tab to see if Google’s smartphone crawler has found any problems when crawling your site.

Use the fetch as Google feature in Webmaster Tools and select the “Mobile Smartphone” option to see how Google’s smartphone crawler sees your most important pages.

Mobile optimization of your site remains an important effort because it’s important for users. If you need help with this just call us for a free evaluation of your site.

Many small business owners are interested in having a website. Some may hire a web developer, which ultimately can be very costly for a small business owner.

WordPress is a free, easy-to-learn alternative to outsourcing your website development. Although a web developer has the advantage of being well-versed in maintaining websites, WordPress can be an extremely powerful Content Management System (CMS) that will assist you in developing and branding your own site.

What is a Web Content Management System?

Web CMS is a tool that assists you with creating and then updating pages onto the web. Once you design your site, you’ll need to make the content accessible to viewers using a product such as web hosting services by Hostgator.

The Word on WordPress

WordPress is a remarkably powerful, SEO-friendly system with thousands of free themes and plug-ins which are very helpful in designing websites and blogs. After just a few tweaks, it can run your website, regardless of whether your content includes a blog or not. It’s also allows users to easily change and publish content, which is essential since getting optimal search engine rankings requires that you publish fresh, relevant and unique content.

The Top 5 reasons to Use WordPress:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

WordPress offers high-quality SEO that takes effect immediately. Matt Cutts, who works for Google’s Search Quality Team, noted that the WordPress system is tailored to meet SEO needs.

2. Content

You no longer need to learn to use a complex HTML editing tool to upload quality content to your site. Once WordPress is set-up, you can create and edit existing pages with the use of a simplified rich text editing tool.

3. Special Features

Developers continuously create free plug-ins and design themes for WordPress. WooThemes is one excellent source of these plugins and themes. This gives you the means to extend your next blog project using contact forms and ratings with hundreds of additional features.

4. Support

Due to the popularity of WordPress, product service and support is just a Google-search away.

5. One-Click Installation

Quick installations are offered by many hosting providers, including Hostgator and GoDaddy.

Of course, once you have your WordPress blog or site in place, you’ll need to ensure that readers can find it. With that in mind, here are 5 bonus tips from the experts at WPMU to ensure that your WordPress site is high-quality ranked on Google.

Seek User-Generated Content

In other words, positive customer reviews are priceless. Many consumers value private reviews over site-specific content, simply because the writer is thought of as unbiased.

Build Relationships, Not LinksTake about half of the money or time that you are currently spending on building your links and reinvest it into ways to connect with your clients. This will pay off in the long run.

Strike Up a Conversation Go to your site and respond to each comment, even if you just say, “thanks for reading.” Make this a daily habit – visitors to your site will appreciate regular interaction.

Tribe Over Traffic It’s better to have a small tribe of loyal readers than a ton of uninterested passersby who happen to click on your site once. Cultivate relationships with readers and try to get at least one client review on your site each month.

Make a Content Connection Have someone look at your WordPress site and tell you, from a non-marketing perspective, how engaging the visuals and content are.

WordPress has a lot to offer small business owners; it’s a great opportunity to make your brand more visible while staying in contact with your customers.

“Professional WordPress – Design and Development” by Hal Stern, David Damstra and Brad Williams is a great book for a web designer focusing on blogs. Detailed book, providing TONS of information for the WordPress designer. Definite must have for professional web designers.

Why Use WordPress for your Small Business Website is a common question asked of web designers. It is the best content management system at the present time and is easy to use even for a person who knows nothing about having a website.

The WordPress Content Management System is the best system for your new and improved website for these reasons.

WordPress doesn’t have to look like a blog, and it provides a way for you to manage your content and update your website effortlessly. You can manage everything yourself, just point and click and edit your own content, publish new content easily without waiting for your web developer.

WordPress has so many plugins so that you can easily add new functionality to your website as your business grows and your needs change.

Google loves WordPress websites. WordPress SEO plugins makes it easy to optimize your pages for the search engines. That means your site is more likely to land on the first page of Google results, which means people are more likely to find you.

With WordPress as your website content system, you have both a website and a blog all in one. Blog are a great way to build traffic to your website. Again Google loves websites that frequently add new content, and having a blog on your website allows you to easily add new content as often as you want.

Videos are the number one selling point for potential clients at this time and YouTube is the second most used search engine after Google. If you do not have videos on your website you are losing a large number of potential clients. WordPress has several plugins that make it easy to add video to your website.

There are plugings that allow your visitor to easily recommend you to their Facebook and Twitter friends. That will increase you visibility to a wider audience.

WordPress allows you to add a form to sign up for your newsletter so that you can keep in touch with present clients and with potential future clients. In this manner your list would see the value of your services. There are easy to use plugins that make this integration with your list building software seamless.

Education for your visitors. With WordPress you can blog as often as you want, offering advice and good education. Regularly publishing quality articles and content to your website gives Google more content to crawl, and provides value to your web site visitors as well as improving search engine optimization.

If you are concerned with growing your business and finding new clients that would benefit from your products and services, and would like to be sure to maintain contact with your present clients so that you can offer your new products and services to them, WordPress is the best format for your website.

Now it is not necessary to have your webmaster do all of your updates. You can do changes yourself with WordPress.

Have you ever said this?

Why can’t I upgrade my website myself?

I want to make some changes on my website, but I don’t want to have to pay my webmaster for such a small update.

Why does it have to be so hard to update my website?

I want a website for my company, but it is just too hard.

I don’t understand HTML, but I want to design my own website?

WordPress is the answer. It is one of the most popular blogging tools available and you can have a website or a blog or both using WordPress. WordPress is FREE and it has lots of power for individuals or small to medium sized businesses looking for an easy way to manage their web site.

WordPress has lots of themes to help you design you website or blog easily and has many tools to help you upgrade your content or add new content without resorting to calling your webmaster.

You don’t really have to be experienced to use WordPress on your website. Most internet hosting companies provide the ability to install WordPress on your site with a single click of the mouse. Making changes to your site once it is launched is as easy as using your word processing program.

Any the best part, is that the search engines love WordPress so SEO is easily done. If you add the plugin All in One SEO Pack, you can fine tune each post so keywords will appear in title tags and description tags.

With all of the plugins and themes available, WordPress is the easiest way yet to have and maintain a website or blog.

A blog is a type of website that is easy to use for the person who does not know HTML. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.

Most blogs allow visitors to leave comments and even message each other via widgets on the blogs. They are popular because they are so easy to maintain and update on a regualr basis.